NOT SO SONNY
Bats do nothing for Gray, or Yank hopes
Maybe Sonny Gray should’ve been better on this night, but he would’ve had to pitch a shutout to come out a winner.
Brett Gardner and Aaron Judge led off with back-to-back doubles against Doug Fister, but the Yankees went 2-for-29 with a walk the rest of the way in their lifeless 4-1 loss to the Red Sox on Friday at The Stadium.
That’s simply not good enough — especially versus a veteran softtosser in Fister who was picked up by Boston off waivers from the Angels in late June.
The Bombers are now 5½ games back of the Bosox in the AL East again — their already slim chances of winning the division growing even slimmer by the day.
“I’ve seen leads disappear in a hurry, so I wouldn’t say that there’s no shot if we don’t, but we certainly feel the urgency that we need to win this series,” Chase Headley said.
Gray, acquired at the trade deadline from the A’s to serve as a No. 2-type starter, struck out nine in seven innings. But three of the five hits he allowed were homers. If only Boston had bunted. Instead, CC Sabathia’s nemesis Eduardo Nunez went down and got one in the third, lining a two-run homer that gave Fister all the run support he needed. No apologies necessary this time.
Rookie sensation Andrew Benintendi added his fifth bomb in the Bronx this year two innings later, while Hanley Ramirez also went deep off Gray in the seventh.
The 27-year-old righty has gotten just 14 runs of support over his six starts in pinstripes — including four starts of one run or fewer.
“I got beat on three swings,” said Gray, who is 2-4 with a 3.16 ERA as a Yankee. “And that’s pretty frustrating.”
Gray, who usually gets a lot of ground balls, had allowed two homers in his previous five outings. He failed to record a K for the first time in his career in his previous start against Boston at Fenway Park on Aug. 20.
“He just made some mistakes,” Joe Girardi said. “And when you make mistakes, they’re going to make you pay.”
There is one concerning stat regarding Gray. In 10 starts against teams with .500 or better records in 2017, he has a 5.12 ERA.
Nevertheless, it’s tough to be perfect on the mound. Sometimes, your offense has to pick you up. Gray’s didn’t, with Fister (7 IP, 4 H, 1 ER) topping out in the low-90s and mixing in a slow curve.
The Yankees have gone from averaging 5.4 runs per game in the first half to 4.4 runs per game in the second half. They’ve missed Judge’s MVP-caliber production before the All-Star break. They’ve also missed the injured Starlin Castro and Matt Holliday, who returned from the disabled list on Friday, for long stints.
And hopefully Greg Bird can keep producing now that he’s back. The Bombers simply can’t rely on only Gary Sanchez. They need more from everyone else in the lineup.
“Our rotation’s done a pretty good job, but we’ve had some trouble scoring runs,” Girardi said. “And it’s going to be important down the stretch that we get guys going. I thought Aaron’s atbats were pretty good tonight, so hopefully that’s a sign of things to come. And you hope other guys get going and we can score some runs.”